—Made possible through the Freeman Foundation’s support of the National Consortium for Teaching about Asia—

With communities across the United States now reflecting even greater diversity and complexity, our classrooms are also rapidly changing, and schools are faced with both opportunities and challenges in providing instruction that is rich and meaningful. Diverse student populations offer valuable opportunities for classroom and community enrichment.

Like many other communities, Asian and Asian American students come from many different parts of Asia and represent a wide spectrum of ethnicities, languages, histories, generations, cultures, and religions. Providing culturally and experientially responsive instruction to these students can be daunting.

In this webinar, SPICE welcomes Dr. Khatharya Um to discuss the diversity of our Asian and Asian American students, and share some pedagogical tools and approaches to support more effective teaching in culturally diverse classroom environments.

Join us via Zoom video webinar for a one-hour presentation, followed by 30 minutes of Q&A with Dr. Um.

Featured Speaker:

Dr. Khatharya Um

Professor Khatharya Um is Associate Professor of Ethnic Studies at the University of California at Berkeley, and Program Coordinator of Asian American and Asian Diaspora Studies. She is also affiliated faculty of Global Studies, the Center for Southeast Asian Studies, the Center for Race and Gender, and the Berkeley Human Rights Center, and serves on the UC system-wide Faculty Advisory Board on Southeast Asia. She was a Chancellor Public Scholar.

Professor Um’s research and teaching center on Southeast Asian politics and societies, Southeast Asian diaspora, refugee communities, educational access, genocide, and the politics of memory. Her publications include recent books From the Land of Shadows: War, Revolution and the Making of the Cambodian Diaspora (NYU Press, 2015) and Southeast Asian Migration: People on the Move in Search of Work, Refuge and Belonging (Sussex Academic Press, 2015).

Professor Um is also actively involved in community advocacy, principally on issues of refugees and educational equity. She has served on numerous boards of directors, including as Board Chair of the leading Washington DC-based Southeast Asian Resource Action Center, and as President of the National Association for the Education and Advancement of Cambodian, Laotian and Vietnamese Americans. She has received numerous awards and congressional recognitions for her community leadership and service. 

In an effort to infuse Asian studies in the social studies and literature curricula, the Stanford Program on International and Cross-Cultural Education (SPICE), in cooperation with the National Consortium for Teaching About Asia (NCTA), is offering a professional development opportunity at Stanford University.

This all day workshop will focus on teaching about religion in China and Japan and the influence of Daoism, Confucianism, and Buddhism. Participants will hear from top China and Japan scholars, engage in China and Japan related curriculum, and network with other local teachers.  This is the fourth seminar in a four part series.

The third annual Hana-Stanford Conference on Korea for U.S. Secondary School Teachers takes place this summer, from July 28 to 30, at Stanford. It will bring together secondary school educators from across the United States as well as a cadre of educators from Korea for intensive and lively sessions on a wide assortment of Korean studies-related topics ranging from U.S.-Korea relations to history, and religion to popular culture. In addition to scholarly lectures, the teachers will take part in curriculum workshops and receive numerous classroom resources developed by Stanford Program on International and Cross-Cultural Education (SPICE).

During the conference, the Sejong Korean Scholars Program (SKSP), a distance-learning program on Korea, will also honor high school students for their exceptional performance in the SKSP program. The finalists will be chosen based on their final research papers, and their overall participation and performance in the online course. The SKSP honorees will be presenting their research essays at the conference. The SKSP program is generously supported by the Korea Foundation. 

For details of the application procedures for the teachers, please visit the SPICE website.

A video clip from the conference held in 2013 is available.